This extra chapter was cut from The Journey Back to keep the book focused. The physical paperback is $12.95 with free U.S. shipping. Any $17 PDF-and-audiobook bundle is a separate optional digital add-on, not the price of the paperback.
Of the three parts of a triathlon, two of them connect with versions of me that already exist.
The bicycle is the easiest connection.
I grew up riding bikes. In Charleston, I had what most people would call a hybrid bike, and I rode it regularly. A bicycle has never felt foreign to me.
The Cannondale is simply a much faster expression of something I have loved since childhood.
It is hard to explain the difference between that road bike and an ordinary hybrid until you ride both. The Cannondale feels blazingly fast. It responds immediately, carries speed, and makes me want to see what is around the next turn.
It is also less forgiving.
The bike has narrow twenty-three-millimeter tires, so I feel almost everything beneath me. Every seam, rough patch, edge, and change in pavement comes through the frame.
Comfort was not its primary design objective.
Speed was.
The bicycle is also bright pink, and pink is one of my favorite colors.
Alen and I laughed about that. I told him, ‘Dude, if somebody hits me while I am riding this thing, they had to be trying. There is no way they could say they did not see the pink bicycle.’
That was a joke, not a safety system. Bright equipment may help visibility, but it does not replace lights, awareness, route selection, defensive riding, or sensible speed.
Still, the color fits me.
One day, Alex and I had gone to a dental appointment in Charlotte. I knew about a consignment shop called Gear Goat Xchg, so we stopped to look around. I was becoming more serious about cycling and wanted to see what they had.
Inside, I found a black-and-pink cycling jersey. It had a pirate sheep wearing an eye patch.
I looked at it and thought, ‘This is perfect.’
I also found a pink windbreaker.
The jersey, jacket, and bicycle looked as if they had been designed for one another.
I have ridden in that kit, and I love the entire thing. The speed, color, absurd pirate sheep, and narrow race tires all speak to the part of me that is still twelve years old.
Cycling asks me to rebuild fitness and improve judgment.
It does not ask me to become comfortable with an entirely unfamiliar world.
Running has a history too.
I had run when I was younger. During my taekwondo years, we trained as many as five days a week for two or three hours at a time. We ran, kicked, drilled, and completed workouts that required serious endurance.
I had much greater cardiovascular capacity then. My VO2 max was almost certainly higher, although I do not have a measured historical value to compare. I was stronger and could run a couple of miles without treating it as a life event.
I am not that age or in that condition now.
But when I began the walk-run intervals, the basic action was familiar. My body had done it before. I understood how to put one foot in front of the other, even if my current capacity was far below my memory.
The bike and the run therefore contain recollection.
The swim contains fear.
I am slightly terrified of water.
That may be understating it.
I had a traumatic experience involving water when I was a child. I am going to leave the details there. I do not need to reopen every part of that experience to establish that the fear is real.
Water does not feel like a harder version of something I already know.
It feels like entering an environment where the rules change.
On the bicycle, if I become tired, I can slow down and put my feet on the ground.
While running, I can stop and walk.
In water, my mind asks a more primitive question.
What happens if I cannot keep myself up?
That is why the swimming portion is not simply another fitness problem.
The bike challenges my conditioning.
The run challenges my endurance.
The water challenges my trust.
Alen has a pool and has been trying to persuade me to get into it for a long time. He wants to help me learn. He also knows a former lifeguard who may be able to work with me.
Those are generous offers.
My answer has continued to be, ‘I am not ready yet.’
I can construct practical explanations. It has been brutally hot in the Carolinas. There have been heat advisories, and the heat index in Charleston has reportedly reached approximately 118 degrees on some days. I tell myself that I would prefer the weather to become slightly cooler before I begin.
Then I hear my own argument.
If I can run outside in 92-degree heat, why can I not enter a pool?
The honest answer is that temperature is not the entire reason.
I am using it partly as an excuse.
The real barrier is the moment when preparation must become contact.
Right now, I can study swimming without getting wet.
I have been watching instructional videos. One woman I follow teaches people to begin learning the movements outside the pool. Her idea is that a person can understand some of the mechanics before entering the water and therefore arrive with less confusion.
I can rehearse arm movements.
I can think about body position.
I can study breathing patterns, kicking, rotation, and how the parts of a stroke fit together.
For me, that preparation has another purpose. It gives my mind a picture of what I am supposed to do before fear takes over my attention.
I am not pretending dry-land practice will teach me to swim.
Water changes balance, breathing, buoyancy, resistance, and risk. Eventually, I need qualified, hands-on instruction in a supervised pool.
But learning the movements outside the pool is one way I am approaching the edge rather than continuing to face away from it.
I have also been following a woman in Charleston who runs and wants to complete a triathlon but cannot yet swim.
Her journey matters to me because I can see someone else standing at the same locked door.
She can run.
She has the larger goal.
She still has to learn the water.
When I watch her take steps, I think, ‘If she can learn this, I can learn it too.’
That does not remove the fear.
It removes the belief that fear makes the goal impossible.
There is no question in my mind that I will become capable of doing this.
That confidence sounds almost contradictory when I have just admitted that I am afraid to enter the pool.
Both things are true.
I am afraid of the first step, and I believe in the eventual outcome.
That space between fear and belief is where the work has to happen.
My original triathlon plan sounded wonderfully mechanical.
Get comfortable on the bicycle. Check.
Build the aerobic engine through walking and running. Check, although there is much more work ahead.
Learn to swim. Check.
Then combine all three and keep practicing until I can complete the event.
On paper, the swim is merely the third box.
Emotionally, it is a different category.
I cannot solve it by becoming more exhausted. I cannot bully myself into water and assume that determination will substitute for water safety.
The part of me that likes difficult goals wants to attack the pool. The wiser part of me knows that panic and water are a dangerous combination.
This requires progression of another kind.
I need to become comfortable near the water.
I need to enter under the supervision of someone qualified.
I need to learn to breathe without feeling rushed, float without fighting the water, regain my feet, move a short distance, and exit safely.
I need to build water competence before I build triathlon speed.
That distinction matters because I have a tendency to skip directly to performance.
With the Cannondale, I want to know how fast it will go.
With running, I want to add more distance than Will recommends.
With swimming, speed is not the first goal.
Calm is.
The first victory may not look like a lap.
It may be putting my face into the water and exhaling without panic.
It may be floating while an instructor remains within reach.
It may be moving from one side of the shallow end to the other.
It may be getting out of the pool and wanting to return.
That would be genuine progress because the central challenge is not whether my arms and legs can produce the motion.
The central challenge is teaching my nervous system that being in a controlled pool with competent supervision is not the childhood danger it remembers.
I want to be careful with that sentence. I am describing how the fear feels to me, not diagnosing myself or prescribing a treatment for trauma. If the fear becomes overwhelming, working with an appropriate mental-health professional may be part of the responsible path.
What I know is that I cannot continue preparing forever.
Watching videos can become another form of postponement.
Mechanical rehearsal can help me arrive less confused, but it cannot reproduce the sensation of water supporting my body or the discipline of breathing within a stroke.
At some point, ‘I am getting ready’ has to become ‘I got in.’
That is the concrete step in front of me now.
Not an open-water swim.
Not a race simulation.
Not proving that fear no longer exists.
The next step is arranging supervised instruction and entering a pool with someone capable of keeping the lesson safe, patient, and controlled.
I have possible help through Alen and the former lifeguard he knows. I also have access to the apartment pool. Before I use either option, I need to make sure the person teaching me has the right skills, the pool setting is appropriate, and I am not treating a friend’s presence as a substitute for instruction.
I should not swim alone.
I certainly should not begin in open water.
A triathlon swim will eventually add other challenges such as distance, other bodies, limited visibility, navigation, and conditions that do not exist in a calm pool. Those belong later.
My job now is much smaller.
Enter safely.
Learn to remain calm.
Learn the basic skills.
Return for the next lesson.
That may be the part of the journey that tests my identity most honestly.
I know how to look determined on a pink race bike.
I know how to keep moving through a hard run.
In the pool, I will have to look like a beginner.
I will have to let somebody teach me something I do not know.
I will have to begin at the beginning, perhaps in the shallow end, perhaps working on breathing and floating while somebody stands beside me.
There is humility in that.
There is also courage.
Courage is not announcing that I am unafraid.
Courage is scheduling the lesson while the fear still has a voice.
The triathlon matters because it contains all three versions of the challenge.
The bicycle reconnects me with joy.
The run rebuilds an ability I once possessed.
The swim requires me to walk toward something I have spent much of my life avoiding.
If I complete the bike, I will prove that I rebuilt capacity.
If I complete the run, I will prove that I developed endurance.
If I complete the swim, I will know I changed my relationship with fear.
That is why the water is different.
It is not simply one-third of the race.
It is the part that asks me to trust the process before I trust myself in the environment.
I am still standing outside the pool.
I am still learning the motions, watching other beginners, and preparing mentally.
I am also aware that preparation has an expiration date.
Soon, the journey has to get wet.
I do not have to become fearless before I enter.
I have to enter safely enough to discover that fear does not get the final decision.
Want to see how I connected the dots?
I wrote The Journey Back to share my experience and explain the Four Metabolic Loads framework. The physical paperback is $12.95 with free U.S. shipping.
→ See The Journey Back Paperback ($12.95)
Educational only, not medical advice. Charles’s experience was alongside physician-supervised care and prescribed medication. Individual results vary. Talk to your doctor.